Stride Ventures overshoots target to raise $200 mn for second fund

Venture debt firm Stride Ventures has closed its second fund at $200 million (approximately Rs 1600 crore). The firm was initially targeting to raise Rs 1000 crore for the second fund. A first close of Rs 500 crore was announced in August 2021. 

Investors in the second fund -- Stride Ventures India Fund II -- include banks, family offices, corporate treasuries, sovereign funds, private equity funds, insurance firms, and HNIs, the company said in a statement.

Stride’s second fund close adds to the substantial dry powder that the venture capital industry has at its disposal for deployment into Indian start-ups even as a funding slowdown is taking root. Besides Stride, a number of leading venture debt firms in the country including Alteria Capital, Trifecta Capital, and InnoVen Capital have raised significant funds in the last 24 months. Several leading Indian VC funds including Accel, Elevation Capital, Chiratae Ventures, A91 Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners (India) and Blume Ventures have also raised new funds in the past 18 months. As per an IVCAPreqin Factsheet, Indian VC funds were sitting on $15 billion worth of dry powder as of September 2021, which offers a glimpse of silver lining to the gloom and doom surrounding start-ups today. 

Like in the case of venture capital investing, which saw a record $35 billion of investor dollars flowing into Indian companies, venture debt too witnessed a corresponding growth in 2021. According to the ‘India Venture Debt Report 2022’ by Stride Ventures, the amount of venture debt disbursed has increased over 10x in the past 5-6 years and has doubled in the last one year (2021) when 111 companies raised funds through debt.

Launched in 2019, Stride Ventures, a sector agnostic fund, sanctioned more than Rs 1600 crore in over 70 companies sectors such as consumer, fintech, agritech, business-to-business (B2B) commerce, healthtech, B2B SaaS, mobility & energy solutions (EV). The fund’s portfolio includes CredAvenue (Yubi), MyGlamm, Zepto, BluSmart, Uni, Upstox, WayCool, MensaBrands, MediBuddy, and Perfios. 

“The growing investor trust in the Indian start-up ecosystem provided us with a great opportunity to develop a strong pipeline of deployments that we have utilized across various sectors. Stride Ventures has already committed a large portion of the fund in industry leading startups and our goal is to continue being a preferred lender while developing innovative alternate financing solutions for founders,” Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, founder and Managing Partner of Stride Ventures, said.